He just died at the age of 89. I realize that most people remember him as James Bond, but to me, he’ll always be Simon Templar. I used to watch The Saint as a child when my dad was stationed in England. We actually owned a car (a white 1962 Mercury Comet) that can be seen in an episode of The Saint – apparently, it contained a scene that was set in the US, and it was one of the American vehicles used to set the scene.

Marion and I hiked up Mt. Falcon Sunday. It took a little over 2 hours to reach the top, and a little less than 2 hours to get back down. Slower than we’ve hiked it before, but we’re both several years older since the last time, and we’ve suffered broken ankles (me) and broken feet (Marion) since then.

It was a beautiful day for a hike, and we both enjoyed it. I saw a fair number of birds, and got photos of a few. There were some Western Meadowlarks flying around near the parking lot, but they never settled down anywhere I could take a photo of them. There were several pairs of a brownish bird with a white band at the tip of their tales that were flying around the trail, or perhaps it was the same pair several times. They never perched anywhere in the open, and were more-or-less playing aerial tag like the meadowlarks. I presumed they were courting, and I don’t have enough information to identify them.

There were several pelicans flying high over the peak – at first, I thought they were balloons that someone had released at Red Rocks Amphitheater, which is just north of Mt. Falcon, but I noticed some slightly erratic motions and took a couple of photos. Out of focus, but fairly recognizable if you’ve seen American White Pelicans in flight before.

There were a few Rufous-Sided Towhees, one of which stayed in one location and sang, allowing me to get some good photos. I saw two hummingbirds, one of which stayed perched long enough for me to get a couple photos, a scrub jay, and a Scarlet Tanager that kept hopping around the interior of a couple trees, preventing me from getting any photos. I did get several photos of some Turkey Vultures that were flying around.

A good day, but I regretted the photos I missed. The title for the post references the fact that today is the first day my calves weren’t bothering me from overuse. The two hours of dance class I have tonight may bring a relapse, though. Gotta drive through the snow to get to class, though. It’s been snowing all day, and the forecast calls for snow though tomorrow. We had at least 4 inches of heavy, wet, snow at work, but it didn’t look like there was as much here at home.

This photo is number 39 in this post (note: there are photos of scantily-clad young women on the site and in this post, just in case that either bothers or appeals to you).

I went through my photos, and found this one:

It’s a view of Cathedral Cove, in the Te Whanganui a Hei Marine Reserve on New Zealand’s North Island. The view is looking through a passage between Mare’s Leg Cove and Cathedral Cove. A beautiful location in a beautiful country. Here’s a couple more photos. Click on them if you want to see them bigger.

… but there are still some setbacks along the way. We had the snowstorm back at the end of April, then yesterday was a pretty significant hailstorm. There were reports of baseball-sized hail in a few areas, but where I was, this was about the largest (note the quarter for scale).

There was so much hail that it was piling up inches deep in some places, but it wasn’t that deep in most areas. It did cover the ground almost completely by the time the storm ended, though.

My windshield was cracked, and a taillight was broken. The amusing thing was that my roof apparently flexed enough that the dome light cover popped off and the bulb fell out. That, at least, was easily fixed.

My boss, who was parked next to me, also received a cracked windshield, as well as two broken side mirrors – on one side, just the housing was broken, but the mirror was broken on the other side.

The women in the office next to ours had windshields that were much more damaged – one had to call her husband to get home, because there were so many cracks in her windshield that she couldn’t see out it. Across the parking lot, two women had their rear windows completely shattered.

The weather report called for the possibility of more storms this afternoon, but that didn’t happen. A couple of years ago, I lost a hops bine to a snowstorm followed by a hailstorm. I’m not growing hops yet this year, but my oregano and sage seem to have come through the storm well enough. I’m going to have to cut back the oregano, anyway, because it’s trying to take over the garden. Can’t have that – I need room for other things, too.